Environmental educator Didi Pershouse was slated to kick off Greening Greenfield’s 2026 speaker series, and even though her Jan. 26 trip to Greenfield was kiboshed by snow, the program wasn’t canceled. Dozens of locals and people from around the world tuned in via Zoom to hear Pershouse speak about themes related to water and climate, and she began the session by asking Connecticut River Valley residents to share observations.
Greenfield resident Mary Westervelt noted that wet springtime can be followed by a summer drought. Colrain resident Elizabeth Erickson said that her household’s water source, a spring, went dry while some local farms were flooded to the point that they went out of business.
Remarks poured into the chat from around the state, as well as California, Australia, Greece, and other places: water tables dropping, droughts, floods, high winds and other worrying conditions. Pershouse did what she does best: addressed problems head-on and illuminated the massive potential humans have to improve our lot on a planet that needs our cooperation. I know firsthand that such topics can be disquieting and lead to resistance. I’ve had to shift my thinking many times, including when I learned that the way my uncle operated our family farm in Quebec — with tractors and other machinery dependent on fossil fuels — was more environmentally damaging than how my grandfather operated, using only horses.
Later, I learned that plowing and tilling–no matter how they’re driven–are potentially damaging. I’ve come to see that theories and practices that initially seem far-fetched, inconvenient or untidy can allow me to become part of the solution.
Perhouse emphasizes increasing plant cover and creating conditions for the formation of a deep soil sponge, a term that’s new to some. She refers to the underground workforce, the microbial community responsible for creating the soil sponge: soil that’s structured, spacious, teeming with life and able to hold water. Compacted soil can’t absorb rainfall or much else. Plants feed the underground workforce and provide cooling via both shade and transpiration — the process by which plants release a huge percentage of the water they’ve absorbed through the soil, and free it in vapor form.
Pershouse developed a curriculum that’s used in more than 100 countries with astounding results. Her manual, “Understanding soil health and watershed function,” is available as a free download: https://www.landandleadership.org/soil-health-manual.html.
We can’t cover all of Pershouse’s points in this column, but her talk is accessible via Greening Greenfield’s website: greeninggreenfieldma.org. Tips for building the soil sponge include increasing the height of plants and encouraging complexity by opting for multi-story plantings.
“It’s also important to reduce (the amount of) bare ground,” Pershouse said, “by increasing cover in pastures, lawns, farms, and between garden rows.”
She recommends increasing photosynthesis by lengthening the growing duration of plants and increasing “diversity of abilities: use a variety of plants that can photosynthesize under different conditions … humid, dry, cool, warm.”
Don’t cut plants back right after they’ve bloomed, and plant fall cover crops. A key point is to “increase water available at the root zone,” said Pershouse. “Allow soil structure to develop by adopting strategies like no-till, putting in rain gardens and uphill ponds, checking dams and stuffing gullies.”
That’s an activity I’d never heard of, but Pershouse said it can be a fun neighborhood pursuit. She urges people to prevent deforestation through policy work, education and outreach.
“We need a systemic view of forests, not just as products,” she said. “Trees aren’t just sticks of carbon to be traded.”
Pershouse noted it’s “now rare to find regions with 100% of their clean water needs met.” Regional exceptions include the Catskills, Adirondacks and protected forests in southern Vermont and northern New Hampshire.
“When you have healthy, diverse forests, they release airborne molecules that attract enough water to make clouds, as well as enough to fall as rain or snow,” she said. “They also help create a vacuum to bring moisture in from other places.”
When plants and trees dry out, they’re more likely to get diseased, and fungal communities lack the moisture they need to bring about decomposition. “You just get dry piles of wood, leaves and branches, which increases the fire risk, along with causing higher air temperatures,” she said.
Such theories were so compelling for Pershouse, she switched careers. Formerly a holistic health practitioner, she now devotes her life to educating people about the soil sponge and related topics. Her perspectives may rub some people the wrong way in left-leaning Massachusetts, but the stakes are sufficiently high when it comes to caring for our environment, we’d do well to follow her lead.
In a Substack post, Pershouse warns that “liberals are missing huge opportunities.” She refers to people who are “key to climate resilience and climate mitigation (whether or not they agree with liberal views on climate change) because they have the opportunity to manage land in ways that help the soil sponge to regrow.”
She continues, “There are many wonderful, brilliant farmers, ranchers and pastoral herding communities around the world doing extraordinary things to help create resilience to flooding and drought, restore water cycles, bring back biodiversity and store carbon in soils. They do this through land management decisions. There are many names for this work — and these names rarely include the word ‘climate’ or even ‘carbon.’ It’s often called Agroecology, Holistic Planned Grazing, and the Soil Health Movement, or more recently Regenerative Agriculture. Much of this work is not recognized, not valued, and is done quietly by poor and working class people who don’t talk about it.”
Greenfield resident John H. Thompson provided a glowing review: “Dido’s talk was a fabulous presentation with a lively Q&A. Her dedication and enthusiasm — and love — for her work were obvious and inspiring. A thrilling treatment of an extremely important topic so essential to our human survival.”
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope” and can be reached at eveline@amandlachorus.org.